Aspects of the disclosure relate to computing and communication technologies. In particular, aspects of the disclosure relate to systems, methods, apparatuses, and computer-readable media for improving performance of storage devices.
Storage devices for enterprise systems require massive storage capacity. Additionally, storage solutions for enterprise systems require sophisticated storage systems for reliability, robustness, fault tolerance, maximizing storage capacity, minimizing power consumption, and reducing latency. Various storage industry players have specialized in specific aspects of these storage systems in a segmented manner providing piecemeal solutions. Combining these various segmented solutions results into a clunky storage solution that is less than the sum of its parts and significantly underperforms across the board.
The segmentation and underperformance of the available solutions today results in a significant deterrent in adaptation of newer storage technologies, such as solid-state devices (SSD). Traditionally, enterprise systems have been implemented using media such as hard disk drives (HDD) that retain data while the power is turned off. Hard disk drives are data storage devices, used for storing and retrieving digital information, that use rapidly rotating disks. An HDD consists of one or more rigid (“hard”) rapidly rotating disks (platters) with magnetic heads arranged on a moving actuator arm to read and write data to the disk surfaces. Due to moving parts, HDDs are inherently slow in terms of servicing I/O operations compared to the number of storage access requests the processor running the software stack can service during the same time. In the past, since the HDDs were significantly slower than the processors, the inefficiencies in the software stack running on the processor were both hidden and non-consequential to the speed of the entire system. However, with newer technologies, such as SSDs, that can support higher throughput for I/O operations, the inefficiencies in the software architecture is becoming a limiting factor in the adaptation of such newer technologies.
Embodiments of the invention solve this and other problems.